The Oskars

CW: Blood, gore, violence, and references to drug abuse

THE OSKARS

People wearing red and white filtered into the bar, avoiding needles of glare from the early-setting November sun and wanting drinks before puck drop. The bartender stood motionless before two regulars at the far end, ignoring the more eager patrons. Oskar and Joe sat in stools directly in front of the taps, their coat jackets draped across neighboring seat backs in a futile effort to establish a micro-territory. A bearded man’s belly rubbed against Joe’s shoulder anyway, half-waving a twenty to charm the barmaid and order another pitcher.

“What do you mean you met yourself?” Joe asked.

“I walked in my own back door.” Oskar turned to face Joe, “Twelve-year-old me just walked in and I met myself.”

***

Oskar remembered the day before, standing at his kitchen island looking in his tool bag for the proper bit to his ratcheting screwdriver. Old and new outlet covers spread on the counter before him, tiny screws cuddled on a cellophane wrapper. Joe heard the screen door yawning and looked up. A young boy stepped over the transom, practiced and naturally.

“Hi,” the boy said, closing the door. Then, as if restating a tired fact, “I’m Oskar.” Stepping closer, he reached out for a handshake.

Passing the screwdriver to his left hand and cautiously extending his right, “I’m also Oskar,” he replied.

“I know. You’re me. Kind of.”

Startled, old Oskar’s voice fills the silence. “Are you lost? Or confused? Should I call your parents?”

“Nah. Dad is out of town and Mom told me to stay out of the house until dinner.” Young Oskar took in the kitchen, noticing the new counters and fresh paint.

“When is dinner?”

Young Oskar returned his attention to Old Oskar. “Whenever I make it. Probably just make buttered noodles again. With Parm.” Old Oskar is briefly excited to share that he, too, loves egg noodles with butter and parm. But then he takes in the boy’s reddish-brown hair with a cowlick in the front, freckles, and nose. The first drops of realization patter against his brain. Then he sees the boy’s pants. Grey, thin corduroy, cuffed at the bottom. The boy’s face was similar, and the pasta a coincidence, but the corduroy was convincing. The rain picks up quickly, drenching Old Oskar’s head in recognition and realization.

Oskar tested his theory. “You’re me? You traveled into the future?”

“It’s more like I came from a parallel universe. I started where you started, but I’m not traveling into your future.” The child lifted his head, searching the ceiling for words to explain.

“Think of a horse race where every horse enters the gate as the same horse. Same blood, same legs, same tendencies and personality. But as they run down the track, the lanes fall away, some horses move to the inside, some pull ahead, and others stumble. Now they’re running different races, in different mud, with different strategies. But, eventually, they all cross the same finish line.” He pauses to let Old Oskar take in his metaphor.

To ensure his understanding, “The ‘finish line’ is death.”

“Yep.”

“How many lanes?”

“I don’t know. Maybe two hundred. I only started wandering last week.”

“And all those horses are also me? Or us?”

“Yeh. Well, they’re all us at the gate. After that? I don’t know. One gets rich. One loses a kid. Another drinks himself stupid.” The boy pauses as if sussing the situation for the first time. “Same horse, I guess. But after enough laps they don’t feel much like the same animal.”

“Are there jockeys?” Old Oskar asked.

“You mean someone steering? Like, in control?”

Old Oskar nodded.

“Not that I can tell.”

Distracting himself, Old Oskar takes a seat at the counter and looks through the tool bag absentmindedly, fingering through the metal. He gestures for the boy to take a seat. “So, why are you here?”

“I dunno. Guess it’s better than playing Gameboy. But since I am here, I should tell you something.” The boy looks down at the counter and picks up an old outlet cover, yellowed by sun. Old Oskar watches the boy, hesitant and unsure whether knowledge from another life is useful or poisonous.

Capitulating to his curiosity but accepting the blow before it lands, Old Oskar moves forward. “Fine. Tell me.”

“Don’t go to the zoo on Saturday with Tessa and Simon.”

“The zoo,” he repeats, almost inaudibly. He is surprised but relieved. The zoo was not rapidly progressing pancreatic cancer.

Regardless of his adolescent pitch, the boy’s tone is sincere. “A tiger mauls his keeper.” Old Oskar asked the obvious question: are he, Simon, or Tessa harmed?

“Physically? No. But the keeper ends up right in front of you. You see everything. After that you can’t sleep. You stop going places. You start drinking again. Lose your job. Relationships.” In a slightly more uplifting voice, “You get obsessed with animal attacks.” He pauses. When Old Oskar doesn’t respond quickly enough, the boy steps in. “You build a bear-proof suit.”

Oskar let out a chuckle. “What, like that guy with the football helmet and pads duct-taped together?”

“Yours is worse.”

Again, Oskar laughs despite himself, then sees the boy is serious. Getting the conversation back on track, Oskar searches for workarounds. “Couldn’t we just skip the tiger exhibit?”

“I don’t think that’s the point. In that life, the keeper finds us anyway.” Young Oskar described just enough of the keeper’s injuries to stop being funny: blood, torn flesh, one ruined eye.

The man had heard enough. “Enough. Jesus Christ.”

And the boy had made his point. “I’m telling you. It’s no good.”

“We won’t go.”

“Smart.”

Before leaving, Young Oskar explains that this is actually his second visit to this reality, to Old Oskar’s horse race. Two days earlier he overheard Old Oskar making the zoo plans while drinking alone on his lunch break.

“So, you’re here to help me? If I listen to you, I’ll be good?”

“Nah. I’ve seen so many fucked-up Oskars I’m starting to think none of them teaches me much. One gets one thing right and ruins another. One avoids that other disaster but still manages a way to screw up.”

“All of us fuck up?”

“More or less. Like I said: same starting gate, same finish line. Everything in between gets weird fast.”

***

The first period was underway on the lone TV, still scoreless. The crowd has quieted, broken only by occasional shouts of joy or disgust. Joe had listened patiently, but the story is too ridiculous to believe.

Trying to hide his frustration, Joe asked, “How does this ‘little you’ even do this?”

Oskar didn’t look up from his drink. “Open windows.”

“Open windows,” Joe repeats, nodding his head in mock understanding. “Of course. Open windows.”

“Remember when I told you about the time my brother and I snuck into our neighbor’s house to drink and drop acid? Well, when he climbs through the window in the vacant house next door, he enters another Oskar’s life. And any open window gets him back to his home.”

Joe stared at him. “This is fucking stupid.”

Growing tired himself, Oskar gives up. “Yeh it is. I’m just fucking with you.” But Joe looks at him and knows that he is not. “Let’s get out of here,” Oskar says.

Joe stops on the sidewalk outside as the crossing light blinks a white walky-man. “You know what we have to do.”

Uninterested in Joe’s ideas, Oskar returns a flat, “No.”

“We go to the zoo.”

“Absolutely not.”

Joe stepped in front of Oskar, blocking the crosswalk. “Listen, if nothing happens, you get your life back. And even if it does happen, at least you know the kid wasn’t giving you a commandment. He was only giving you information.”

“Well, instinctively, I am loathe to obey a baby version of myself from another universe.”

Joe grinned. “So we agree.”

“We do not.”

It is sunny and temperate, and the zoo parking lot is crowded with strollers. Everything about the zoo looks indecently ordinary. Joe is delighted. Oskar is not. Oskar approaches the ticket stand and pays for their admission.

“What a day for the zoo, man. I am legit pumped.” Proud of his scheme, Joe challenges Oskar, “Just try to tell me that dragging you here wasn’t a good idea!”

 “You got me to the gate,” Oskar admits. “But I’m the idiot who bought the tickets.”

“You already know what happens to the keeper.”

“That’s not the same as knowing what happens to me.”

Walking up the zoo path, past the Outback Adventure and bored-looking elephants, Oskar begins to realize a purpose. “When a kid—with your own face—tells you that he’s seen what you become, it doesn’t feel like mere information or advice. It feels like a sentence. That’s why I’m here. I want to know whether it is.”

Joe and Oskar lean against the fence separating the giraffes from the kids feeding them romaine, just opposite the tiger enclosure. Two Bengal tigers, Panthera tigris tigris, sun themselves behind large boulders. Families drift past. Children eagerly peer over the railings, straining to see the majestic animals and hoping to hear a cartoon roar, like the whole world making a noise. But, having strained to see only the tigers’ near-motionless and silent state, most move on quickly. Hours pass.

Shortly after noon, with the cool morning winds now gone, one tiger and then the other disappear through an interior gate.

Bored and hot himself, Oskar asks, “Ready to call it?”

Joe nods in agreement. As they start back down the path, a faint scraping sound turns Joe around in hope. But the enclosure remains empty. And then came the unmistakable sound of a tiger’s growl. A sound below a rumble, heavy and from deep inside, like ancient machinery turning in the ribs.

Then screaming. Human screaming.

Frozen, neither man moves. The soundscape erupted all at once, animal and human noise battering the air—thrashing, the clang of metal, a voice breaking itself against pain.

“Fuck,” Joe whispers.

“Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

The two turned and hurried toward the zoo's entrance, following a bend in the path, running past the red panda exhibit. From a dull green building, partially obscured by landscaping, a metal service door burst open. The keeper flailed into the daylight, screaming in pain. Blood blinds him. In shock, he strikes a wooden fence, rebounds, and collapses at Oskar’s feet.

“HELP! HELP! I can’t . . . I can’t see!”

Joe and Oskar exchange a quick and knowing look. For half a second, Oskar is in his kitchen again, listening to himself describe this exact moment. Then he knelt.

Just as the boy had described, the keeper is nearly in pieces. Flesh from one shoulder is peeled back, exposing muscle and fat. His shirt is soaked with blood, making it impossible to discern the nature and extent of the injury beneath. The keeper's left eye hangs outside its socket, dangling like an obscene cup-and-ball game. Tendons, nerves, blood vessels stretch from a dark cavity. As the keeper tries to get back to his feet, loops of intestine slipped from beneath his shirt onto the sun-baked pavement.

Everyone flees wildly. But Oskar and Joe remain.

“Go get help!” Oskar barks at Joe, who takes off running.

The keeper clawed at Oskar’s shins. “Oh fuck. Oh fuck. My guts. My fucking guts, man.”

Praying that his face won’t betray his words, Oskar tried to calm him. “Stay down. Don’t try to get up. Help is coming.”

“Why didn’t I listen to that fucking kid!? He told me I was gonna be eaten by a tiger today.” Looking up into Oskar’s face, silhouetted by the sun, the keeper’s next words came out low and spent. “Little asshole spends too much time on the internet. But he told me.”

Oskar almost laughed. “My kid warned me, too.”

The keeper stares down, bringing his hand gently to his stomach.

“Not about getting mauled,” Oskar says. “About…seeing you. I came anyway.”

“What? Who fucking cares!? You weren’t mauled by a tiger!”

Joe returned, breathless. “Ambulance is coming.” He saw the keeper clearly for the first time. “Shit. You were right, Oskar. I am never going to unsee that.”

Oskar stands to look at Joe. Then slowly kneels back down. “Just help me apply pressure.”

The keeper slumps over himself, limp. “Is he dead?” Joe asks.

“No. I think he’s just passed out from the pain. Or shock. I don’t know.” Oskar and Joe try to hold the keeper together, a sick Humpty Dumpty. “Push his…insides back…inside. While he’s out.”

“What do you think I’m trying to do? It’s like trying to nail jelly to the floor.” A zoo employee arrives with a landscaping utility cart. The bed is absurdly small. They roll the keeper onto a tarp and lift him up, angling him head first into a corner. His legs hang over the back and side.

“It’s fucking tiny,” Joe says.

“Who gives a shit? Drive.” The cart tore away toward the flashing lights of an ambulance outside the entrance.

***

Oskar stood at his kitchen sink, washing his hands. His clothes were smeared with dark, rusty stains. With only the stove light on, his shirt cuffs appear nearly black. He pumps more soap into his palm and scrubs again and rinses. Lifting his hands to his nose, Oskar inhales, tasting copper. He adjusts the water temperature and starts again.

The back door swings open and young Oskar walks in. His eyes search the dark house. He finally sees Oskar at the sink. They faced each other. Oskar turned off the tap.

The boy spoke first. “You went.”

“Yeh.”

“Was it as bad as I told you?”

“Worse.”

“So why did you go?”

Old Oskar looked at him for a beat, struggling to focus his thoughts. “Because you scared the shit out of me.”

“That was the idea.”

“Not the tiger. You.”

Young Oskar waited. The man leaned against the counter.

“You came in here with two hundred lives in your head. Which Oskar drank. Which one got married. Which one lost his job. Which one got mauled by life in whatever way. I thought I wanted all of it. I wanted you to tell me which turns to take. To be spared.”

“Would’ve spared you this.”

“Yeh.” Old Oskar looked at his hands. “And I wish I hadn’t gone. I mean that. I can still see his eye. I can feel his guts moving through my fingers. And I may see that shit every day until I die.”

“So. I was right, then?”

“About me? Maybe. About you? No.”

Slightly confused. “But I am you.”

“You were me. Or I was you. Same starting gate, like you say. But every stupid thing I did after age twelve is up here somewhere,” tapping his temple. “Everybody I loved. Everybody I hurt. Every morning. Every accident. Every dumb day that I can’t remember. You don’t have any of that yet.”

Young Oskar runs his hands down his corduroys.

“Those other Oskars aren’t your future. Not anymore. They’re more like, like friends. Or brothers.”

“Brothers?”

“Brothers who had the same childhood.”

“So, it doesn’t matter what I see?”

“Of course it matters. Just not as instructions.”

Young Oskar looked toward the window above the sink.

“You know the worst thing you could do with this thing, this gift?” Oskar asks as he flips a switch, turning the sink light on.

The boy guessed. “Get stuck somewhere?”

“No. Well, in a way. The worst thing you could do is come home with a list.”

“A list of what?”

“Who not to love. Where not to go. Which job not to take. What not to try. Every mistake some other Oskar made. You could build your whole life out of other men’s regrets and mistake it for wisdom.”

“You’re saying I should ignore them?”

“Not ignore them. But understand that their stories are not maps to happiness, to peace.”

Young Oskar took this in. “You really wish you hadn’t gone?”

“More than anything.”

“Then this story is a map.”

Old Oskar allows himself a small smile. “Maybe. Just don’t mistake the map for the road.”

***

A pair of sneakers, white socks, then grey corduroys emerge from the vacant home’s first-floor window and drop onto mulch. For the first time since discovering it, Oskar does not immediately turn to see where the window might take him next.

From across the street, Brian King called out. “Oskar! You comin’ or what?”

Young Oskar looked back to the side of the house, craning his neck upwards to absorb the enormity of its contents. Somewhere beyond the sill are thousands of Oskars: thousands of warnings, disasters, marriages, deaths, triumphs, trials, mistakes, and laughter. Enough answers to ruin a life.

He pulls the window closed and turns back toward Brian.

“Yeh. Coming!”

He runs down the driveway and into the street, chasing his own story.